What you need
- The wing, taken off the model
- A sheet of Letter or A4 paper, or a credit card
- A plain floor or table in a different color from the wing
Steps
- Open the aircraft and tap Measure wing with camera, or tap Measure with camera in the CG calculator.
- Lay the wing flat, underside up, on the plain background.
- Lay the paper flat on the wing, fully inside its outline.
- Tap Take photo. Hold the iPhone level, straight above the middle of the wing, and take the picture.
- Check that each handle sits exactly on a corner of the paper, then tap Continue.
- For a half wing, tap the root edge. For a whole wing, drag the two handles onto the centerline.
- Drag any orange or blue corner that isn't on the wing's edge, then tap Show results.
- Check the sizes against a ruler, then tap Save.
Good to know
- Half wing is the default. One half fills more of the photo, so it measures more accurately.
- A credit card works, but it's small, so tiny errors grow across the wing. Use paper if you can.
- If the paper can't go on the wing, choose Beside the wing and enter the wing's thickness.
- Orange handles mark the leading edge, and blue handles mark the trailing edge.
If it doesn't work
- The paper's corners weren't found
- Use even light and a background darker than the paper. Tap Find again, or drag the four handles onto the corners.
- The outline is wrong
- Tap Place corners by hand, then drag each corner onto the wing's edge.
- The wing measures too big
- Check that the paper lies on the wing itself, not on the table beside it.
Words used here
- CG
- Center of gravity: the point where the model balances. Too far back makes it unstable. Too far forward makes the nose hard to lift.
- MAC
- Mean aerodynamic chord: the average front-to-back width of a tapered wing. CG positions are given as a percentage of it.
- Leading edge
- The front edge of a wing, stab or control surface.
- Trailing edge
- The back edge of a wing, stab or control surface.
- Root
- The inner end of a wing or stab, where it meets the fuselage.
- Chord
- The width of a wing or control surface, from its leading edge to its trailing edge.